Can & Can'tankerous

Speculative fiction is a broad umbrella category of narrative fiction referring to any fiction story that includes elements, settings and characters whose features are created out of imagination and speculation rather than based on attested reality and everyday life. That encompasses the genres of science fiction, fantasy, science fantasy, horror, alternative history, and magic realism.

Harlan Ellison has been compared to an annoying gnat, a no-see ’em
buzzing in your peripheral vision till you try to swat him, and he’s
gone.

The great English writer Michael Moorcock — and if his name does not
leave you dumbstruck with awe, you should move on — called Ellison a “fox
in the sf hen-coop” whose presence will “produce a brighter, faster hen,
with improved survival characteristics, laying a tastier, more
nourishing egg” and went on to say Ellison was “a brave and lively
little beast, who makes a great show of himself to the hounds, but
remains too wary ever to lead them to his lair.”

The brilliant novelist Joanna Russ, in admiring frustration, opined
that Ellison’s stories “have an assault on you,” but complained that
“they’re not like a piece of sculpture that you can stop and walk around
and look at from all sides.” Ellison’s reply: “Absolutely not; I want
them to grab you by the throat and tear off parts of your body.”

Ellison’s a double agent who lures you into the bush, and when you
blink, he’s gone; you don’t know whether to turn left or right, or just
dig a hole. He crafts enigmas set to entrap you. When Ellison sees where
a story is going, he figures — since he’s writing for the smartest
readers alive — you do, too. So he stops and turns left. Or right. Or
widdershins. Or digs a cave with 200 tunnels.

Can & Can’tankerous gathers ten previously uncollected
tales from the fifth and sixth decades of Harlan Ellison’s professional
writing career: a written-in-the-window endeavor that invites re-reading
from the start before you’ve even finished it; a second entry in his
(now) ongoing abcedarian sequence; a “lost” pulp tale re-cast as a
retro-fable; a melancholy meditation for departed friend and fellow
legend, Ray Bradbury; a 2001 revision of a 1956 original; an absurdist
ascent toward enlightenment (or its gluten-free substitute); a 200-word
exercise in not following the directions as written (with a special
introduction by Neil Gaiman that weighs in at four times the word count
of its subject); a fantastical lament for a bottom-line world; the 2011
Nebula Award-winning short story; and Ellison’s most recent offering, a
fusion of fact and fiction that calls to mind Russ’s frustration and
Moorcock’s metaphor while offering a solution to the story’s enigma in
plain view.

Strokes be damned! Ellison’s still here! HE’s still writing! And with
more new books published in the last ten years than any preceding decade
of his career, his third act is proving to be the kind other living
legends envy.

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Harlan Jay Ellison (1934-2018) was an American writer, known for his prolific and influential work in New Wave speculative fiction, and for his outspoken, combative personality.

His published works include more than 1,700 short stories, novellas, screenplays, comic book scripts, teleplays, essays, and a wide range of criticism covering literature, film, television, and print media. Some of his best-known work includes the Star Trek episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", A Boy and His Dog, "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", and " 'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman", and as editor and anthologist for Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions (1972). Ellison won numerous awards, including multiple Hugos, Nebulas, and Edgars.

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